Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 692: The wheat has ripened thousands of times, but I learned to plow the land for the first time

After the project made initial progress, Xiongtou Village became somewhat famous. Later, the Corps held a meeting, and Sergeant Yang and Father Alexander were specially invited.

The corps' notice said that after the spring, Baisai Khan would bring court officials to inspect the overall progress of the work. Therefore, everyone had to be alert, because the amount of funding and distribution this year and even in the next few years might depend on this performance.

Sergeant Yang was in high spirits as he led his men to do the dust removal every day. He was not very satisfied with the arrangements. He often complained that there were too many messy administrative affairs in the corps, and even in this special environment, he was unwilling to save everyone some trouble. It was really unbearable that the bureaucracy had already begun before the war had even started.

But Father Alexander thought that this was a good thing. The existence of administrative affairs showed that the system was sound, which was rare in the Slavic land. This place had never had the concept of "bureaucracy" from ancient times to the present, and as long as the management method could be established, life would be much easier.

Moreover, their work was relatively smooth. Winter was the hardest season in the land of Ross. However, they took advantage of the winter to complete a lot of work, which made the priest very satisfied.

On the one hand, it was not particularly cold in Xiongtou Village, so cutting trees was no problem. On the other hand, the more important reason was that not only did everyone not have to stockpile food this year, but they also received external aid. The imperial court had mobilized a large amount of food from Crimea, so the camp did not have to worry about hunger at all.

They just need to cut more trees and hand in the wood. And the legion doesn't actually want their wood. These materials are used to build houses and various facilities in other settlements that don't have enough wood. They are used up locally. According to the plan, it may take until the year after next to further expand the population and logging scale to have excess wood, which can be sold for money and enter the market.

In addition, the Romans taught them how to use machinery to dig and process peat from riverbanks and swamps when clearing silt. The Romans looked down on these fuels because they were weak in firepower, and the mines did not use them. But for the village, with these engineering byproducts, the cost of heating was much lower.

Wood and peat are not rare in this land, but are everywhere. And unlike Western Europe, the land here is vast and sparsely populated, and the lake is deep and far away, so poaching and logging are difficult to control. But before, the locals have not been able to make good use of these resources.

The reason is very simple. For example, wood needs to be cut down to get it. This may seem like nonsense, but in the countryside, ironware is a rare thing. Whether it is farm implements or tools, everyone saves as much as possible, and there is not so much iron to waste. If even iron axes and iron saws are lacking, the efficiency of cutting and processing wood will definitely be low, and naturally there will be an even greater shortage of materials...

The various materials brought by the Romans greatly improved the production efficiency in almost all aspects, and successfully survived the most difficult days at the beginning. In this way, everyone naturally had confidence.

After the spring, according to Father Alexander's prediction, they can really start all kinds of work. Xiongtou Village has a good geographical location, and everyone is efficient, so the progress of clearing the land is very fast. The church has decided to use this place as a pilot area and will send two priests who specialize in breeding with a group of assistants to study how to use this soil.

In this way, everything will gradually get on track. The village's output will become positive by next year at the latest. Therefore, even if he goes to show everyone the results, Father Alexander is very confident that he will not be unable to produce anything by then.

After preparing the materials, he and Sergeant Yang handed the work over to their assistants and went to the meeting.

The venue was in the new town of Cherkasy. It was originally a den of bandits, but the army attacked it, captured a large group of bandit leaders and Italian merchants, and pacified it. The old town was too messy, so they demolished part of it and built a new town by the river as the headquarters of the army.

After arriving at the place, the two men acted separately. Sergeant Yang went to ask his old comrade for information, while Father Alexander went to find his classmates at the Kiev Theological Seminary - in addition to dealing with superiors and showing results, this kind of gathering is also an occasion for everyone to exchange intelligence and materials.

Especially now, the formal trade system has not been established, and the settlements often still trade goods with each other. They often need to come forward and find other villages and towns to exchange things.

Although it is very troublesome, there is no other way. At present, almost all new villages and towns are not self-sufficient and have to rely on materials imported from the court. However, the materials allocated by the court are all transferred in batches based on pre-estimates or applications from local managers.

This model seems to be very efficient overall, and it does solve the difficulties encountered at the beginning, but upon closer inspection, there are still many problems.

There are only a few partners like Sergeant Yang and Father Alexander, and they are lucky. Most of the settlement managers either don't know much about the land of Ross, or are not very professional in their work, which makes their estimates not necessarily accurate and often have omissions. In addition, the environmental conditions are constantly changing, and as a result, everyone's estimates are sometimes too much, sometimes too little, and rarely just right.

Moreover, each batch of supplies provided by the government was very large. They were gathered into a large ship and sent along with the fleet. As a result, the supplies needed by the village were always either in short supply or in excess. When the ship did not come, everyone was anxious and had nothing to use, so they could only stare at it; when the ship arrived, there was a large amount of extra supplies, and they could only leave them there.
Father Alexander wrote several times, but he soon realized that the transportation department seemed to only care about cost and safety, and didn't pay much attention to whether the recipients were convenient or not - this was not the scope of their performance. Moreover, he couldn't refute it, because even now, there were still large blank spaces between the settlements, and no one knew what was hidden. The area around the transportation line was not peaceful, and the possibility of robbery could not be ruled out, so armed military escort was required. This resulted in the high cost of transportation and the impossibility of high frequency.

Everyone can indeed apply for expedited delivery. But what is urgent is already a big deal. Everyone thinks that their own needs are the most important. In the current situation, the higher-ups can't take care of so many things at once, so they can only review and deliver large quantities of materials first. For the rest, they have to figure it out on their own.

When Father Alexander was studying in Kiev, he had a good relationship with a classmate named Gregory. Now Gregory is a priest in the western town of Chagannovo. Unlike Xiongtou Village, it is a market town that was naturally formed a long time ago. It is said that it was already a regional center during the Golden Horde era. Therefore, the economy is relatively developed and can provide some handicraft products.

Xiongtou Village now needs some tools to repair their equipment. But there is no one in the village who can forge iron, and there is a lack of processing tools. When the camp was first established, Officer Yang and his men did prepare some, but those pliers, chisels, etc. were used up very quickly and are no longer enough.

If he asks the army for it, it may take a month or so to get approval, so it is not worth waiting so long. Now that everyone is meeting, he will find Father Gregory and ask him to send someone back to town to buy it from the blacksmith. He can take it back on the way home after the meeting. At present, he has nothing to exchange. However, there is a family in Xiongtou Village who used to raise bees for the local church. According to the beekeeper, there are many suitable shrubs and woodlands at the head of the village, and as long as there are bee species, he and his wife can resume their old business. Father Alexander has asked someone to make a few beehives for them, and has commissioned friends in the church to buy queen bees in Kiev, and the business will open soon. When the time comes, the honey here will be used as compensation. There is a market in Chagannovo Town, so there will be no worries about not being able to sell it.

Moreover, he also knew about the embarrassing incident in Chagannovo before.

According to the records of the local church, since the Golden Horde gradually disintegrated, their area has been in chaos. The Poles in the west, the Lithuanians in the north, and the various steppe tribes in the east can all intervene in this area. Various forces come and go, and it is very uneasy. Later, the Romans expelled the forces of the Golden Horde and nominally controlled this area, but they still kept the local tribes in a state of vassalage, only asking them to pay tribute and lacking real management.

Twenty years ago, the Purple Tent Khan Bashir defeated the White Tent Khan Tokhtomish. Many large tribes suffered severe blows because they supported Tokhtomish. Taking this opportunity, the Roman Khanate began to reorganize the grasslands. The tribes that surrendered to the Purple Tent had to graze in fixed places, were not allowed to move without permission, and were not allowed to conflict with other tribes at will. Their military forces were also brought under the supervision of the Northern Army, and they had to obey the Khan's dispatch and fulfill their service obligations during wartime.

During this process, the division of the tribes changed a lot, many tribes were broken up and reorganized, and there was also a major change in the upper echelons of the tribes.

The Khan examined the bloodlines of the tribal leaders in the name of fulfilling the oath he made when he founded the country. Most of them could not withstand serious examination, so he seized on them and declared that they were not from the Golden Family and could not continue to be Khans. He also announced that he would promote the Great Yasa, strictly investigate the tribal nobles, depose a large number of them, and replace them with people from the Golden Family with the same surname.

The opponents could not defeat him, and most of the neutral herdsmen and small leaders felt that changing the Khan would make no difference. Therefore, this set of measures was quickly implemented.

However, these new khans had weak foundations and nothing but the title of bloodline. Therefore, the real power of the tribe soon fell into the hands of officials sent by the court, headed by the khan's "prime minister".

This large area near Chagannuovo Town was under the jurisdiction of Sahanbe Khan. It is said that he was a distant relative of the Purple Tent Khan, and therefore was granted a fiefdom here. According to the system, Chagannuovo Town and the surrounding cultivated villages were under the jurisdiction of the government; the uncultivated wasteland belonged to Sahanbe Khan's tribe, and the two sides were not allowed to interfere with each other.

However, this place is not far from the front line, so there are military missions. Sahanbe Khan's army will rotate every two years: in the first year, they will go to the front line to confront the Poles and Lithuanians and perform tasks. In the second year, they will be replaced for rest and replaced by other tribes. The soldiers who are replaced can rest. The quartermaster will settle their military pay and bounties, and will also set a time to allow them to enter the town to purchase daily necessities as a welfare.

According to regulations, Chagannuovo Town needs to provide them with logistical support. However, the discipline of Sahanbe Khan's army is not very good. They often use this power to extort the town and surrounding villagers, asking them to provide more. As long as they don't go too far, the Beiya officers generally don't care, and the town dare not resist.

Combined with the local Russian traditions, they even formed a habit over time.

In the north, the Slavic residents under the rule of various principalities often lie down all year round - no matter how much they planted, it would be snatched up by others, so they might as well give up. In Chaganovo, the villagers would lie down for a year and work hard for a year: when Sahanbe Khan's men were on duty, they would work hard to accumulate as much food and products as possible, and then hide them; when those soldiers came back, they would lie down and rest, saying that the harvest was not good this year, there was only so much, so you can do whatever you want...

The two sides formed a tacit understanding. However, a few years ago, something suddenly happened.

That year, the locals lay down as usual, waiting for the extortion that comes every two years. However, this year, Sahanbe Khan did not show up. Everyone became nervous, not knowing what was going on, and could only lie down.

The next year, Sahanbe Khan still did not come. The villagers began to panic. If he did not come to extort money, would they still be able to work?
In the past, everyone would just lie down and die, but now, people have a little hope, so they don't want to give up. However, the rules seem to have failed, and no one knows when they will come.

For a time, rumors spread in the town. Some people suspected that something happened in Rome, and some suspected that fighting broke out on the front line. In short, no one thought it was a good thing. Someone even swore that his relatives told him that the coalition forces of Sahanbe Khan and the Minsk people were defeated by the Poles. His tribe probably ran away, and the Poles were about to kill him.

For a time, people in and outside the town were in a panic. After all, Sahanbe Khan only collected money once every two years, but if the Poles came, it was hard to say what they would ask for. Many people even began to hope that Sahanbe Khan would come and rob them as soon as possible, instead of dragging it out, so as to save them some trouble.

In the third year, the church sent people to tell everyone that the front had been reorganized again. Sahanbe Khan handed over his power, received a large sum of money, and went to Dadu to enjoy his life. Some of his people switched to farming and herding in the local area; some who did not want to change their lifestyle went to the Volga River area in the east under the leadership of the prime minister.

The frontline fortresses and defense lines were also taken over by the regular army. In other words, from then on, including the past few years, various policies have become more regular and will no longer be the same as before. It may be that the system is still a bit messy after the change, and they were not notified in time. But they are also outrageous. It is obviously a small commercial center, but they didn't send anyone to ask about this kind of thing.

The residents around the town were so angry that they jumped up and down, saying that such an important thing could be forgotten. If you mention it one more time, you will die...

From then on, they were worried about gains and losses every day, always feeling that people around them were working secretly and making money privately, but they were not included. Therefore, the conditions proposed by Father Alexander to teach breeding knowledge would be very important.

(End of this chapter)